It was the other rifle, that of O'Boyle, that spoke next. Two rifles, even if they are of identical make and model, will have recognizable different voices. And two men, even if for the moment of the same cast of mind, will place their shots with a little different sort of humor. Dana knew these two men. And it was the barking laughter of O'Boyle that was paramount as he took his turn.
He scotched the rope-line with the shot; scotched it, but did not sever it. He did it the second time, and the rope began to fray but did not break. O'Boyle wasn't missing, he was hitting! Dana was himself an astonishing shot, but he couldn't shoot like that. He knew with horrified admiration that O'Boyle was placing the shots exactly where he wanted to. Write it down (on the wind if nowhere else) and remember it for your very life — coarse O'Boyle can really shoot!
Dana knew that the third shot would sever the rope-line and that it would sever it at exactly the wrong-right moment. O'Boyle stayed within the code of the game, but barely.
The third shot did sever the line. Dana lurched and slid, sickeningly and it seemed eternally, over space. He did not fall to his death, though the odds had been exactly even that he would. O'Boyle loved odds that were on the very knife-edge of eternity, and those were the odds he allowed now.
But Dana had been above the rugged place. Even the jar of the line parting did not quite jar him off the cliff. He scrambled and clung; with cat-reflexes and with all appendages he clung, even with his now foreshortened and screaming left thumb. Then he went up to the sheltering revetment, expecting one more shot, hearing it, but being unaccountable jerked aside from it. The strong hand of Otis Ranker, reaching down from above, gripped him by the forearm and pulled him over.
Ifreann and O'Boyle let them go. Ifreann did remove a low sliver from Damisa's ear with a most canny shot, and he scotched and creased that man lightly on the cheek. But that was all in fun. They'd continue the game at another time, Ifreann and O'Boyle would, and with a slightly different code for a different occasion.
About noontime of the next day, the lady Valiente and Dana and Damisa and Otis Ranker the dour United States man were in rock-ribbed Quito. And Quito is, in every meaning of the word, the most rock-ribbed city on earth.
Quito at that time was believed to be 9,100 feet above the sea. In the twentieth century it is given an altitude of 9,350 feet. We doubt that it has risen that much in the interval, though the thing isn't impossible. More likely there has come more accuracy in height-finding; at least there has come agreement on the greater height. It was the highest capital in the world, but it would have seemed much more like a mountain-top city if it hadn't been surrounded by peaks as much as ten thousand feet higher.
Nevertheless it was a very high and rock-ribbed town; rock-ribbed, but never rock solid. All the buildings were cracked by the earthquakes which rattled the town a dozen times a year. It was sunny and pleasant and bracing; it was cool; sometimes it was cold; and it was a rare day when it didn't rain at least once. But it always rained quickly and got it over with. The men were great-chested and the women were great-breasted, and both had the nobility of carriage which this gives. The city was always in the sight of snow in three directions, and on the other side one could always look down upon clouds.
“Five armies are advancing on Quito at the moment,” a man told them.
“And the largest of them has less than three hundred men,” the lady Valiente said.
“Oh, you spoil a good story,” the man complained. “We like to feel ourselves besieged.”
There had been gun fire in Independence Plaza only the day before. The main buildings were pock-marked with shot. (Some of the pock-marks were three hundred and sixteen years old since Benalcazar first came with his Spanish; some of the pockmarks were quite new.) It was the same with the earthquake cracks.
Quito was already a great stone town of the Indians when the Spanish came, this in contrast to Guayaquil which had been founded from nothing. And Quito had kept its older character; the iron-work and the balconies of the Spanish had, in many cases, been added to buildings that were already there, and already old.
The soul of the town was as hard as the rocks (and as cracked, so the people of Guayqaquil used to say). It was embattled rock. It was conservative, or it was restorative. It was constantly rebuilding (both the town and the soul) but rebuilding the same things in the same way out of the same stones. Nobody could say which rock of it was old and which was new, but it was constantly renewed. It would have been better to rebuild it three thousand feet lower down, but it wouldn't have been Quito then.
It was a city of noble churches: El Sagrario, La Merced, Santa Ana, San Francisco (the city was still officially named San Francisco de Quito). But most of the Franciscans were gone now; the Dominicans were gone and the Augustinians (both being thought too Spanish to remain after Independence). German Jesuits had replaced the Spanish Jesuits in the old college and seminary. But it was still a very religious city; the Indians had always been more sincerely religious than the Spanish anyhow.
Quito had one great saint to remember, Maria Ana de Jesu de Paredes y Flores, also called the Lily of Quito. Guayaquil had no saint and had to admit that this was a difference and deficiency in herself. It was the only superiority that Guayaquil ever admitted to Quito.
If Ecuador was the brains of South America (all Ecuadorians of every persuasion claimed this) then those brains were schizophrenic, riven clear in two. The Quito half was a cracked rock, the rocks in the head of the land. But the town was gracious, it was beautiful, it was the high home of the restorative vision. The party passed through it all too quickly. Oh, they'd all be back again and again in the several years.
About noon-time of the next day (the third of their journey) the lady Valiente and Dana and Damisa and Otis Ranker were very high in one of the bull mountains; they were in the Condor's nest itself, inside the volcano's rim, panting for air, sunburned and frosted at the same time.
Then Dana saw it and raised his arm towards it. And they all saw it.
One half of the sky was incredibly blue, sun-washed and golden-dipped blue such as can only be seen from rarefied heights: cerulean blue, angelic blue, pleasantly eye-burning blue, the light-suffused sky-blue of eternity.
The other half of the sky — but there wasn't any other half — there was nothing there. Not clouds? No, no, though there was a local cloud-name for this non-cloud. Not mist? No, not mist, not fog, not overcast, not light, not darkness, not limit, not extension either. There was nothing there at all. There was only half a sky over the world in this place.
“It's a common phenomenon here,” a man was saying (the man was sitting back in a sort of rock cove under the volcano's rim), “and it's sometimes seen in other high places also. It isn't an illusion. The full sky, when it is seen here, is the illusion. Over all of the Latin Americas there is only half a sky. We are the disadvantaged people, the people only half-graced by God. It's always been.”
“Och, you Indios have as much sky as anyone else,” Dana said to him. “Expand your spirit a little and you will see it all.”
“Man of one tongue, you have no place here,” the Indian man said with a touch of anger. “You'd not even understand the language of condors. You Spanish have always had a full sky over your own heads, and very little you've done with it. I curse you.”
The man probably did curse Dana, in Quecha perhaps, or in Quitu or one of the other tongues. There was a mistake here, of course. Though many of the Spanish were fair, how could anyone mistake Dana for a Spanish man? And how could Dana mistake this man for an Indian?
Dana cursed the man in English, and he cocked one brow. Dana cursed him in Irish, and he cocked the other. Dana cursed him in Spanish, and the man discovered that Dana wasn't Spanish; he grinned to himself, remembering who Dana was now. Then Dana laughed.
“I know you,” he said, “if I could only remember. You're not an Indio.”
“Nobody knows me,” the man said. “I am an Indio. Why do yo
u come up here?”
“To meet the Condor, the hero-bird,” Dana said.
“Have you no birds of your own?”
“The birds of my own land could not fly this high,” Dana said. “They'd gasp for air and turn blue in their faces. They'd fall down. But I can go this high. I know you now. You are Gabriel Moreno. I know your cousin Milagroso, and I used to see you yourself in Paris.”
“Gabriel Moreno is still in Paris,” the man said. “He will not return to Ecuador till next year. I am the Condor.”
“Is he?” Dana asked the lady Valiente.
“He is the Condor,” Valiente said. “I told you that he was a bare-necked, wretched bird without enough feathers to cover himself. But we'll bring feathers to him. We'll fledge him and wing him. Really, he is the best and only prospect. We'll make a heroic bird of him yet.”
“Your cousin Milagroso calls you the Christian Hercules; he barely laughs when he calls you it,” Dana mocked. “And everybody brings feathers to this unmuscular Hercules. Is this how heroes are made, Gabriel?”
“How were you made into a hero, Dana?”
“Then you do know me. You know my name.”
“In my Gabriel Moreno person I remember you, Dana. As the Condor, I look out with other eyes entirely. I don't know how heroes are made, and I study the subject. It is necessary that I know. It is required for my land that I become a hero. Some heroes are predicted and predilected and snatched up to heroism by the hair of their heads, as yourself by the Count Cyril Prasinos, as evil Ifreann by the Count Ouzel Rotwappen.”
“I've not heard of the Count Ouzel,” Dana protested. “Of what is he Count? Ifreann is Son of the Devil direct and has no need of intermediaries.”
“Should the devil remember all his sons?” the Condor asked. “The Count Ouzel is elder half-brother of Ifreann and is his mentor. They have not met, just as the Count Cyril and yourself have not met. Count Ouzel is Count of extensive red meadows in hell and of a corresponding estate on earth which you have seen. Your own Count Cyril is Count of all green lands whatever, and his special estate is named Greenfields. So the private estates of the two Counts adjoin, on an island that is Earthly Paradise — with snakes. Count Ouzel is a high member of the Serpent Lodge.”
“You are saying that those two estates on Basse-Terre — ?”
“I am saying, Dana, that if ignorance is a requirement for being a hero I will become one with difficulty. Yourself and Ifreann have the quality naturally. I haven't it; but I don't believe it is required.”
The non-illusion, the true-view of the sky, had modified now. The clear line was gone. In the fine blue half there were multitudinous clouds going like white full-sail ships. There were darker clouds over the non-half, but Dana knew (all of them knew) that it was total nothingness behind. There was only half a sky here forever.
“We here are only half-graced by God for the reasons that we are Indian,” the Condor said. “Cock not your eye at me, Dana. Even in my Moreno person I am one quarter Indian. As the Condor I am entirely so. God, being God, should be free from prejudice; yet I believe He does hold some slight prejudice against the Indians. He didn't give us an even start. We are three thousand years and more behind. We brag of some of our antiquities, our quite recent antiquities by any time scale, but they correspond with a very old Babylon and a very old Egypt, and on a much smaller scale. We missed everything after. We haven't been Judea or Israel. We haven't been Greece or Greater Greece. We haven't been the Hellenic ecumene. We haven't been Magi Persia or later Persia. We haven't been Rome. We haven't been Christendom. We haven't been the Low Middle Ages or the High Middle Ages. We haven't been the Crusades. We haven't been the Ocean Centuries. We haven't been the Renaissance. We haven't been the Science. We've been Spain but slightly, we've been the Church of Trent but slightly. We haven't been England; we haven't been France; we haven't been the salons or the academies or the clubs; we haven't been the philosophers or the inventors; we haven't even been the charlatans. We've missed thirty centuries. We are only half a people under half a sky. Is there any solution for us at all?
“The Anglos to the north had one solution. They simply killed off the Indians and left not one in fifty alive. The Spanish of the south (having parched souls, but at least souls) imbrued us lightly and then left us alone. But they left us alive. We didn't even come to Christ till everyone else had tired of Him and thrown Him away. We'll have to complete our sky at least. Dana, what do you build a sky from?”
They were with the Condor for three days. (Have you not noticed that the period of three days is frequent in para-history?)
It was warm and pleasantly sulphurous within the cone of the volcano. Emanations of banked fire rose and condensed, though a hundred feet away there were snow fields. The Condor, when he rose to his feet, was not so small a man as he had seemed. But he was still a Spanish-blood Parisian, and he had walked about amid the gun-fire of Paris making myopic notes with pencil in a notebook. Would he ever be able to take a larger look at anything?
A Hercules he was not, not yet. An Indio he was not, except in his own word and in his own role as the Condor. Was he the best hope for schizophrenic Ecuador? Was he the best brain in this land that called itself the brain of South America?
“Who has been guarding this papanatas, this ninny?” Dana asked.
“Myself, loosely and from a distance for several days,” Otis Ranker said. “I'll continue it. I have learned, as well as I could in the short time, all the trails that one might follow up here. He returned and became the Condor no more than a week ago. Yourselves have given the direction to his first determined destroyers, for you were followed; my intervention for you on the cliff was my first intervention.”
“Oh, and who will intervene and misdirect this evening and tonight?” Dana asked.
“Yourself tonight, Dana,” Otis said. “Damisa tomorrow night. Myself for ten years then if that is necessary.”
“Any gold up here, Otis?”
“Just enough to justify my first role as prospector. Here are the high head-waters of the greatest gold streams and seams in the world. It's too high for it here, of course, but I've found my own mother-lode here. It's of a more royal metal than its reflecting substance.”
So, two hours before dark, Dana went out on mission to intervene and misdirect. He went conspicuous. He had a bright way of going and a dark way, and now he went bright. It was as though he turned a light on within himself, or made himself all reflecting body for the late sun. His light hair was a torch, his green shirt was an eye-compelling shimmer. On the snow heights and rock heights he was down and over and up again. This particular bull mountain was really three peaks in one, three throats and mouths of one volcanic gullet. And Dana misdirected from the Condor's nest to another of them.
Blackbirds were gathering and settling over an area (how could common blackbirds be so high as this?), gathering for reason and homage (Dana hadn't realized before that Ifreann was of the Ouzel, the blackbird clan). Larger and blacker birds rising away from that same area in anger — ravens, or their South American cousins (Ifreann was not of the raven clan).
Bright against the high sky, Dana spoke with his rifle. The quick ears below him might as well accustom themselves to the sound of its voice. And Dana believed that he heard the black and purple thunder of a laughter — was that possible at more than two thousand yards? Then the rifles of Ifreann and O'Boyle entered into the conversation over too great a distance.
Dana projected himself down the slopes arrow-like toward them, still bright and eye-catching. He went too rapidly for that tricky descent to be able to imperil him, went like a burning arrow on a singing mile and a quarter shot. Remember that both Ifreann and O'Boyle can really shoot! Aye, but remember that Dana is Dana!
Almost within the dead range of them now, and he'd top the last crest like a green-white flame in the final sun. Ifreann and O'Boyle were hypnotized and mystified by the Dana madness. He seemed to be coming as bait, bu
t all their senses told them that he came alone and that nobody had infiltrated aflank or behind them. They'd blast him then. He topped the crest, and they blasted.
But he'd dropped. For it was a split crest and deeply gashed. Dana landed soundlessly in brush-bush thirty feet below, the singing shots transfixing his after-image on the crest. And the after-image fell as had the image, dropping, gone. It's likely that Ifreann and O'Boyle believed they had felled Dana with their shots. And at that moment the light went out.
The crest had been the last place illuminated by the final sunlight. The tropic-mountain sun sets instantly when there is no mountain peak left to pick out. And Dana himself went dark, his own slouch hat on his head again now and an Indian derby atop that covering the white fire of his hair, a hasty poncho over his bright shirt and flushed body.
Look out! O'Boyle had been a night man, a poacher and deer-killer in Ireland. Ifreann had paranormal, though sometimes stupid, sensing. But Dana was a black arrow in this last part of his flight and he was through them and behind them in the quick dark. There really wasn't any twilight here.
Dana was into their camp a hundred yards behind them while they still held their breaths and their trigger fingers to listen for his death-twitches before them.
Ah, a little of gunpowder sprinkled here and there in the scanty camp; a little of thermite wick from small heap of supply to small heap; a little of black blasting powder that is heavier than gunpowder; a jug of rock oil for its explosive qualities, mixed with whale-oil for sustained burning. Och, and here was Ifreann's own little keg of gunpowder. 'twould do.
Ifreann hadn't an elaborate camp, but he carried a few fine things with him, fine food especially, and a small arsenal of weapons. That devil could shoulder a quarter of a ton when he traveled heavy, and he left it all in cache when he traveled light.
With flint and with candle stub (he always carried these things with him) Dana fired it all, camp and cache. It exploded beautifully, and Dana's laugh exploded at the same time in high melody.
Half a Sky: The Coscuin Chronicles Book 2 Page 13